Along with the wheels, try to catch the FLAT on those 101's right after it happens. This might give you the technique portion of Why FLATs.

My one young college thin art guy (22 or so) friend has not figured out why he has flatted the last we talked (spring 2012). I am guessing a slight very hard twist. I will get an update when I see him this Winter. BTW the floor is good, smooth and towards the slippy side when cold so for him it is not a floor issue nor a heavy skater weight issue. OK on a real cold or dirty floor he probably would not flat.

Floors have changed a lot since my 1960s and I have read about them on SLF. SO take that blurb for what it is worth.

If the FLATs go away on another wheel type it would be interesting to know if your skating had to change to adapt to the wheel. In other words you are NOW not getting FLATS yet are not skating the same moves.

Waiting your INPUT,

Yours in Skating, MA/NY Skating Dave
P.S. One final note. If you want to resurface those wheels you can do as HK47 wrote which is done by Derby Skaters or send to Dan Beaver in Texas. Many find the wheel skates differently after ReGrooving/Surfacing

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe
Vanathane appears from our US Patent Office to be a Trademark
So I can not find the true composition. In another article it seems to still be a urethane yet of the natural variety called rubber

Edit-01: You are going to have to do the US Patent Office search on your own. The link holds only inside the web server. I thought so yet was not sure. Do USPTO.gov / trademarks / then Vanathane. A company out of Oklahoma

I do have a tendency to do stops on one or two wheels usually both inside wheels. The rinks i go to are often crowded so there are many times when I have to do a hard stop to avoid people.

OK It sounds like you and I do this similar me with a softer wheel. Usually I don't skate bat out of hell when it is crowded with weak skaters yet you might skate faster. Anyway I almost never do a Hard T-Stop-SlowDown. I do a T-Slow Down half hard then I might do a Lateral to the Inside or a Sideways to get around the obstacle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by curtisxdavis

o - o I do t stops at around 130 degrees (something like this: _ /), I usually put most of my weight on my leading leg and only shift weight to the braking leg if I need more stopping power o - o

About the same yet I would put it at 130 to 140. I have played with tipping up the skate and using the outside edges.

You need to befriend someone with a lathe, stat! FWIW bigger wheels don't feel the imperfections so much, really noticed when I played on 40mm Fomacs that that floor just felt hard and lumpy.Not necessarily true. Actually the bigger the wheel the Larger the flat spot so you'd feel it more not less.

All American Plus comes in Urethane and Vanathane varieties, urethane gives more grip ... All American Dream are (much) more spendy and only come in Vanathane. I recon you might want to stick with Urethane wheels, though.Neither of these are the originals http://a248.e.akamai.net/origin-cdn....os/PW-26-2.jpg are how the originals SHOULD be marked unfortunately this is also how the Vanguard URETHANE knock offs look. Now the newer Vanethnae Suregrip AA= have 2 ++ instead of the + and a "m"
Connies skate place has both if you'd like to compare.....just be warned NOBODY like the urethane versions =) ( well no one that liked the originals)

Some of the Roll Line wheels are made of plastic (Magnums for instance) and have a d-rating instead of a. I have no idea how they behave though, sorry.
Good luck!

The D rating may be "Harder" but the wheels wear faster.
Roll Line wheels flat faster the any other wheel in existence. Something about their urethane..... they virtually evaporate with ANY kind of real friction. AMAZING wheels....just don't EVER try to put sideways force on them.
Now while I HAVE actually flatted original AA+ wheels (there really small so flats are easy the sand out and you barely notice them......What REALLY messed the wheels up was the fact that a warped the bearing cages (or lack there of since its only made out of the same material as the wheel.)

So far as the Gripy VS hard urethane argument.......I can put the same flat spot in a set of bones elite 103A as I can in a set of 97A Yes, it IS easier to do it to the 103a BUT this doesn't always mean softer wheels are the answer,,,Savvy?
Indeed...rolline are "harder" yet easier to flat.

Since that Wheel Hardness test is a vertical only test and done static, it is more than possible that with sideways force or scrubbing action wheels will perform differently and independent of their vertical test when put to a horizontal stress test.

Yep the polymer mix and the process. Plus the goal of the manufacturer. I am thinking about Bones and RollLine in particular that are designed for Artistic Skating.

Most people expect plastics/polymers to behave uniformly in all directions like water or most liquids, with one test telling it all. I was going to use metals yet dang metals can be forged and also give different performance depending on direction.

This is kind of interesting since even though it adds to my technique argument it adds to why a manufacturer sticks with a certain combination. A combination that when used inappropriately for it's best use does badly for an alternative use.

I mean if you are Junk Around Skater should you use a 101 or 103a as your junk around wheel? It looks like the answer is NO or you might have to get used to more Flat Spots than another skater.

Yours in Skating, Engineering, MA/NY Skating Dave

P.S. One slight addition to Flat Spotting. I started asking again for Input on Flat Spotting from skaters. One Derby guy told me on Darts he has flatted a lot yet he loves T-Stops. Yet I don't see him skating that hard to Flat a Wheel.

I always avoided skating session when I had Bones Elite wheels on my plates. I found they flatten more easily than other wheels I have used. Right now, I have 20-year old Hyper Dance Plus wheels on my plates. No flats, excellent roll and speed. The down side is I feel glued to the floor. These wheels do not slide.

I really only ready the last few posts on this topic, but I have tried using a few Bones 101A Super Elite Wheels recently and they do flat.

A couple of months ago when I was skating a lot of sessions in California I was trying a lot of different "old school" wheels on a few floors in Southern, Ca.

My friend who got me into skating 40 years ago and also recently was skating on his orginal FoMac Zephr wheels. They worked well for him at Ventura, Ca, Glendale Ca and were a tad slippery at Northridge, Ca.

To make a long story short they work well at Fountain Valley, Ca. They do not flat. If you ever get a chance to try them out, I like to hear what people think.

The oldest wheels I can remember using were Rannalli Pro-Line. They were hard and they could slide. My first skate was Riedell boots, Snyder Super Deluxe plate, Fafnir bearings and Rannalli Pro-Line wheels. I used the skate for figures, dance and session skating. Those wheels did not flatten. They are still good.